[His elisions and evasions are very interesting ..Why so many omissions evasions, elisions, concealments, vagueness opacity censorhip ...concealment revelation silences - on the one hand bold assertion, on the other... ]
Of course having committed himself not to own up to who had written the memorir, it frees him not to have to write about many things he did that would have identified him - his rel in the development of science and rt education, his activities as the author of widely-used science textbooks, and above all his activities as the [ Buckmaster Cookery schools]
John Charles Buckmaster (1819?-190?) published this book in 1897, when he was nearing 80 years of age. As is common among memoirists, he makes far more space for his childhood, early adulthood and the [kaleidoscope] of work he undertook before he married and settled in a house in New Road, just off St John's Hill, than his later life. It covers...
Although it says a lot about himself as a child, and as a son or grandson, it says almost nothing about himself as a husband and a father .... His wife an their five children are scarcely alluded to, let alone named.
A Village Politician covers in some detail his activities in the campaign to save Wandsworth Common but says almost nothing about the myriad parallel battles he fought at work (in the 1860s he was ...) and in the Battersea Vestry, the local government of the day.
Strangely his narrative comes to a complete halt with the passing of the Wandsworth Common Act in 1871, ? years before this book appeared. Yet JCB continued to be engaged in numerous activities, including campaigns to ...
It stops shortly after[NOT HERE? But perhaps the oddest thing is that ... events covered in his book stop shortly after 1871, when the Wandsworth Common Act that preserved it "for ever... etc" was passed...
[NOT HERE: We don't even know for certain his birth year, but probably 1819 (the year of Peterloo) or 1820.] He was born in the small village of Slapton in Buckinghamshire...It seems likely that his parents were not [at that time] married. His mother died when John was very young....probably of smallpox but possibly of puerperal fever...His father [took to drink] and could no longer care for JCB and his young brother Richard (who [] emigrated to the USA in his teens, prospered, and always used his mother's surname - [?]
[Say a bit more about the next 15 or so years]What are to make of the title "A Village Politician"? It doubtless refers to his roots in Slapton, a Buckinghamshire village, and perhaps to his main political focus in the Battersea Vestry, the small-scale local government of its day. But also likely to be an ironic nod to the unremembered unmemorialised "village-Hamden" who lay in an unmarked grave in Thomas Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard".
Some village-Hamden, who with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton, here may rest -
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.
John Hamden (more usually Hampden) opposition to Charles I's arbitrary taxes made him a national figure, with a reputation for honest and principled opposition to arbitrary rule.
Incidentally, Thomas Hardy's title "Far from the Madding Crowd" is derived from the same source - less than a hundred words later.
Presumably JCB believes that, had his mother not died he would probably have followed his father as a small farmer, he too would have ended - unknown / unremembered - in the Slapton churchyard.
In ?, JCB and his children erected a massive oak lychgate in memory of JCB's parents at the entrance to Slapton churchyard u - perhaps a nod towards JCB's early work as a carpenter. "Grade II. Lychgate. Dated 1905 on lintel. Low red brick side walls, upper part of heavy timbers, tiled roof. Arcaded side walls. Entrance sides have curved braces to lintel. In memory of Thomas and Phoebe Buckmaster. Included for group value (B5)."
[Buckinghamshire Council: Building record 0415601000 - LYCHGATE, CHURCH ROAD]
"The Life Story of John Buckley, edited by J.C. Buckmaster"
Why did JCB write as "John Buckley", a barely-concealed pseudonym? Why claim he was the editor and not the author? It's a puzzle. Similarly, he names very few people (other than one or two well-known political figures), and there are almost no dates. Place-names are usually similar-but-different, such as "Oxenbridge" for Uxbridge, or "Grundle" for Arundel, in the manner of his almost-neighbour on the other side of the Common, Thomas Hardy). JCB never even once mentions Battersea or Wandsworth. All very frustrating for us today.
I can imagine some of the reasons - wanting to conceal the identities of people he had clashed with who were still alive; a concern that his four sons were advancing in their respective professional careers, and may have been embarrassed.
On the other hand, his pretence may simply have been playful, in a long literary tradition.
But although his evasions were probably never seriously intended to deceive, it has certainly meant that people searching for his autobiography under the name "Buckmaster" have failed to find it.
His publisher, was founded by Thomas Fisher Unwin, husband of British Liberal politician Jane Cobden in 1882. It is likely that JCB knew Jane (born 1851) well. Born 1851, she was the daughter of Anti-Corn Law League campaigner Richard Cobden - as a young man, JCB had been employed as a paid agitator or "lecturer" in the League (which he brilliantly describes in the middle chapters).
The date of publication - 1897 - is [some years] after JCB had left Battersea for Teddington ? years earlier shortly after his wife died in 1890. His wife's death also coincided with the handing over of the management of the Common to the Metropolitan Board of Works (which JCB abhorred, and with reason, as we shall see. The following year the Common was taken over by the new London County Council. JCB very much preferred local direct democracy with maximum participation of all residents. Although he continued to be politically engaged, he had become exceedingly jaundiced (see his [witness statement to the House of Common's ?Select Committee in ??) The choice of author for the introduction - ?? Mundella - is also of interest
Mundella, like JCB, was from an abjectly poor background and had received little formal education (and that chiefly at Sunday school), who had come to politics through [Chartism and Anti-Corn Law] agitation. He however prospered as an industrialist - he became a successful hosiery manufacturer in Leicester - before ecoming a Liberal Party MP and Cabinet Minister under Gladstone.
This summary may be useful: Mundella's Elementary Education Act of 1880 had in effect made full-time education compulsory until age 13 greatly extended the As Education minister he established universal compulsory education in Britain and played the major part in building the state education system. At the Board of Trade he was instrumental in the reduction of working hours and the raising of minimum ages in the employment of children and young people. He was among the first to prove the effectiveness of arbitration and conciliation in industrial relations.[3] He also brought in the first laws to prevent cruelty to children.[4] His political achievements in the late Victorian age are said to have anticipated 20th century society.[The remainder of my story I leave for the present, content to be like him who
"Left half told The story of Cambuscan bold."
FINIS.
______________________________
PB notes
"Left half told / The story of Cambuscan bold" - John Milton, Il Penseroso.
[Source: Il Penseroso]
[Or call up him that left half told The story of Cambuscan bold, Of Camball, and of Algarsife, And who had Canace to wife, That own'd the virtuous ring and glass, And of the wond'rous horse of brass, On which the Tartar king did ride; And if aught else, great bards beside, In sage and solemn tunes have sung, Of tourneys and of trophies hung, Of forests, and enchantments drear, Where more is meant than meets the ear. ]This story is told by Chaucer in the Squire's Tale, but was never finished...Also used by
Southey, Robert, 1774-1843. / The doctor, &c.
(1848)
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/Literature/Literature-idx?type=article&did=Literature.RSouthey5.i0293&id=DLDecArts.PapworthHints&isize=text
[Google: Cambuscan]
E. Cobham Brewer 1810 - 1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898. [Cam'buscan is the king of Sarra] King of Sarra, in the land of Tartary; the model of all royal virtues. His wife was El'feta; his two sons, Algarsife and Cam'balo; and his daughter, Can'acë. On her birthday (October 15th) the King of Arabia and India sent Cambuscan a "steed of brass, which, between sunrise and sunset, would carry its rider to any spot on the earth." All that was required was to whisper the name of the place in the horse's ear, mount upon his back, and turn a pin set in his ear. When the rider had arrived at the place required, he had to turn another pin, and the horse instantly descended, and, with another screw of the pin, vanished till it was again required. This story is told by Chaucer in the Squire's Tale, but was never finished. Milton (Il Penseroso) accents the word Cambus'-can. 1 "Him that left half-told The story of Cambuscan bold." (See CANACE.) https://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/image/peacock-she-brought-the-mirror https://www.bartleby.com/81/2903.htmlSend me an email if you want to comment on anything you've seen or read on the site, or would like to know more about something, or just want to be kept in touch.
Philip Boys (aka "HistoryBoys")